Story and photos by Matt Axling, Yellow Island Preserve Steward
When people think of The Nature Conservancy’s presence in the San Juan Islands, Yellow Island is often at the forefront. The iconic island hosts close to 2,000 visitors each year and is home to one of the most spectacular wildflower blooms in Western Washington.
Yellow Island
Less widely known is the fact that The Nature Conservancy also stewards three other islands in the San Juan Islands and holds the conservation easement on a fourth island. Each month, I hop in the Conservancy’s trusty aunty green boat, to check on these islands and monitor the flora and fauna throughout the year.
Come with me on a quick tour of the Conservancy’s San Juan Island properties. Along the way, I’ll highlight the works of a few local authors who have written about the area.
Sentinel Island
In 1980, The Nature Conservancy purchased both Yellow Island and Sentinel Island. Sentinel Island is located 6 miles west of Yellow Island and sits in the fast-moving currents of Spieden Channel. When I visit Sentinel Island, it is common to see over 30 seals hauled out on its intertidal rocks. The upland forest is a mix of Douglas fir and oceanspray. I often see bald eagles sitting atop the trees and surveying the beautiful open prairie on the south side of the island.
Sentinel Island
This prairie is where June and Farrar Burns first homesteaded in 1920. June Burn’s amazing autobiography Living High chronicles her life of travel and exploration between 1920 and 1940, many of them on Sentinel and the San Juan archipelago. Sentinel Island was the last island in the San Juans to be homesteaded, and for good reason. It has no potable water and shallow soil covers a rocky crust which made it impossible to sustain crops. But that didn’t stop June and Farrar from eking out a living and having the fantastic adventures captured in her book.
Listen to an oral history of June Burns
Jack Island
Jack Island is located close to Anacortes, just north of Guemes Island. This 19-acre jewel is similar in size to Sentinel Island, but has a very different history. It was once the site of a commercial fox farm, and later it was slated for private development. But an island visionary stepped in, purchased the island and placed it into a conservation easement with The Nature Conservancy.
Jack Island
Today, the island is owned by our amazing partners at the San Juan Preservation Trust. Each year, I coordinate with Trust stewardship staff to monitor the island and to observe the continuous effort of removing invasive plants from the island.
If you stand on the south side of Jack Island, you enjoy the view of Padilla Bay and the ancestral lands of the Swinomish Tribe. One of the most interesting books I’ve read in the last year is Peace Weavers, by Bellingham author Candace Wellman. Through incredible and meticulous research, the author chronicles four women from four different northwest Washington tribes. Through the stories of each of these women, the book shows how Native American women played a vital role in northwest Washington in the early 1800’s. One of the women profiled in the book is Caroline Kavanaugh, who was the daughter of Samish and Swinomish parents. All of the San Juan Islands are the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish people, and one must wonder if Caroline may have paddled past Jack Island at some point.
Read an interview with Candace Wellman
Deadman and Goose Islands
Goose and Deadman Islands sit in Cattle Pass, which is a narrow, fast-moving channel between the south ends of San Juan Island and Lopez Island. Both islands are rocky and windswept, nearly inaccessible to humans due to wind and current. Because of this isolation, they are great habitats for fauna!
Goose Island
Goose Island is best known for its nesting seabirds. Double-crested and pelagic cormorants sit on top of tall, cylindrical nests while glaucous-winged gulls build smaller nests on the ground. In the summer, hundreds of cormorants and gulls may be nesting on the island at any given time.
Both Goose Island and Deadman Island are also home to seals. The reefs off Deadman Island and a small beach on Goose Island provide a safe location for harbor seals to haul out and for pups to rest while mom hunts for food.
Because of the massive tidal exchange through Cattle Pass, the resulting turbidity creates an environment that is teeming with marine life. In my trips to monitor these islands, I have seen stellar sea lions, a minke whale, and I have had several encounters with orcas. Orcas, especially the Southern Resident pods, will follow salmon through Cattle Pass as they head from the Straits to their spawning grounds on the Fraser, Nooksack or Skagit rivers.
For a terrific read published recently by local author Jason Colby, check out his book Orca. Colby chronicles human’s complex relationship with orcas – from how we shoot them from fishing boats, to captivity, and current conservation efforts. The book has an additional layer of complexity as he describes how his father participated in the infamous southern resident capture in Penn Cove.
Watch Jason Colby speak at Seattle’s Town Hall lecture series
Yellow Island
When I accepted the Yellow Island caretaker job, I was familiar with the island in the sense that I had driven my boat past Yellow Island hundreds of times and knew enough about the area to navigate carefully around the Wasp Islands, but I had never stopped to explore the little 11-acre gem. On my first day of work, I stepped off the boat with a group of Conservancy donors and was blown away by the beauty of its landscape. It was late spring, and wildflowers blanketed every nook and cranny of the island. The array of colors and abundance of flowers made me feel like I was in an alpine meadow on Mt. Rainier.
Yellow Island
Susan Vernon’s book, Rainshadow World, describes her ramblings through the San Juan Islands during one calendar year. Susan is a local botanist and naturalist, and her observations are both informative and fun to read. One of her chapters takes place on Yellow Island and really underscores its unique environment and the importance of protecting it.
